Injuries to soft tissue, such as cartilage, skin, muscle, bone, tendon, and ligament where the tissue has been injured or traumatized frequently require surgical intervention to repair the damage and facilitate healing. Such surgical repairs can include suturing or otherwise repairing the damaged tissue with known medical devices, augmenting the damaged tissue with other tissue, using an implant, a graft or any combination of these techniques.
One common technique for repairing diseased or injured tissue is to implant a tissue scaffold at the defect site, either alone or along with cultured and amplified cells. In the past, such scaffolds have consisted mostly of two- or three-dimensional porous scaffolds that allow cell invasion and remodeling once the scaffold has been combined with living cells and has been delivered inside the patient. Another technique is to load the tissue scaffolds with tissue fragments and then implanting the tissue-laden scaffold at the defect site. Depending where the defect is located and the size of the defect, these tissue loaded scaffolds can vary from a few millimeters to several dozen millimeters in length and width.
The current method for implanting these tissue scaffolds is by an open or mini-open surgical procedure, which increases recovery time for the patient. Although a fully arthroscopic procedure for delivering a tissue-loaded scaffold to a defect site would be advantageous because of its minimally invasive nature and reduced side effects, there is presently no convenient method for delivering the tissue-loaded scaffolds through a cannula to the defect site without the risk of damaging the scaffold in the process. Moreover, where it is necessary to deliver the scaffold to a defect in a joint, there is currently no acceptable way to arthroscopically deliver the scaffold without reducing the pressure inside the joint. It would therefore be desirable to provide a method and device which allows delivery of a tissue loaded scaffold in a fully arthroscopic procedure. It would also be advantageous to provide a delivery device which allows the scaffold to be delivered through a small diameter tube to a defect in a joint without reducing the pressure inside the joint.